Talking to reporters later, Prasad, Union law minister, thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP national president Amit Shah for reposing their trust in him and lauded Nitish Kumar for ensuring that the NDA functioned as a team.

RJD candidates Manoj Jha and Ashfaq Karim filed their nomination in the presence of the party’s national vice-president Rabri Devi, state president Ram Chandra Purve and national executive member Tej Pratap Yadav.

Jha, who is the party’s national spokesman, said, “Politics in the country today is a fight between fascist, dictatorial forces represented by the BJP and its allies, and socialist, democratic forces which we represent”.

The Congress has only 27 MLAs in the 243-member Bihar Assembly.

It is banking on nine surplus votes of ally RJD and one of the CPI(ML).

Yesterday, former BPCC president and MLC Ashok Chowdhury had claimed that a party ticket to Akhilesh Prasad Singh, who was with the RJD till a few years ago, would cause a split in the state Congress.

Chowdhury had quit the Congress with three other MLCs, and joined the JD(U) a fortnight ago.